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Thursday, August 2

Not ALL blooms were created Equal!

I know you are thinking that a bloom is a flower, but in the world of watercolor painting it's not! Sometimes blooms are gorgeous -- and sometimes they are really not well placed. Unless you wait for each color to dry before adding another -- getting blooms is the nature of watercolor painting -- blooms happen. Sometimes (well -- most of the time) I leave them but other times I want to fix them.

Follow along and let me show you what a bloom is and how you can fix one -- or leave them. First -- I'm starting off with this pen and ink drawing I did of some flowers -- inspired by a little notebook I bought with Illustrations created by the very talented Cori Dantini. I love her work.

I used a dip pen and some new ink (which I am totally in love with) to draw (pen??) this during warm-up time in my Illustration class this week. Since I had NOTHING to share on my blog today I grabbed my Koi's voila -- instant tutorial and beautiful art to share.

I don't use a fancy paint brush holder -- just an old Tomato Paste can that I can put my brushes in to keep them from getting all messed up in my studio. I always start by painting in the background, so in this case I painted a blue sky. I don't really let the colors dry, I just move on to the next color.

Which in this case is a mixture of pink and white for the center of my flower and red for the petals. Notice my first "bloom" happening on that petal as the blue seeps into the red.

Quickly fill in all the flowers -- this is just a sketch and I'm trying not to fall in love with everything, ha ha. Like that will happen. Flowers+Watercolor Paint+Time in my Art Journal while still in my pajamas=LOVE.

Now -- notice the green bloom -- not so pretty. You can see it above and below. Not so happy with that little serendipitous spreading of the paint.

Here's how I get rid of it. Take a paper towel and bunch it up and gently press it into the bloom. Try really hard NOT to pick up any paint around the wet paint you are removing -- I know easier said than done.

While you can still see a little bit of the green -- when the paint dries you can go in with a clean brush and smooth the color out to make it less obvious.

Let's talk about breathtaking blooms now. :-)

Like this one. Be still my blooming heart. Yes. I love this one (and sorry for the shadow of my fingers. It's a dark morning and I've got the bright lights on today) the orange and yellow from the center of the flower is blooming most beautifully into the red. Love this. This is a perfect bloom. I did clean up the bloom that was spreading out of the petal on the right -- but other than that -- this to me -- is perfection in a watercolor bloom!

Now that you know what a bloom is and how to fix it -- go out into the world and make some ;-) Thanks for stopping by -- hope you have a WONDERFUL Thursday!

Wow. This is such a great little tutorial. The I love about watercolors is that things like this happen. You kind of never know what you are going to get. By the way, do you ever use water brushes? I love those because I can pretty much watercolor anywhere without a mess.